Apple iPod. Does anything else really need to be said? We're talking about the world of digital music players and as everyone who owns a computer is aware, Apple owns this market with approximately 70% of it in their pocket. It's fair to say that when Apple sneezes, the music industry gives them a hanky. But this being said, does Apple just own the market because it's trendy to have an iPod? Or is Apple really making that good of product? A fair question, though completely beyond the scope of this review, but we will be taking a look at it in general (and the answer is... Yes. To both questions).
We are taking a look at the
Apple iPod Nano, 2GB version, supplied to us by
Geeks.com. The iPod Nano comes complete with everything you need to start using the product. Headphones, case, charging/transfer cable, Apple iTunes (more on this later), and instructions. All you have to do is charge, add music, and start listening.
The Basics:
Let's start by taking a look at the iPod Nano itself. Let me start by saying... I love the Nano! It's slick, easy to use, has lots of features, and a very reasonable battery life. One might ask why you would choose one of the iPod Nano's over one of the other iPods. The general reasons I can come up with are size and the fact that it has flash memory instead of a hard drive. There are many times when a smaller unit is convenient, funny enough that's the same place where having flash memory is better than having a hard drive. If you are active when you want to listen to music (such as running, exercising, working in the yard, shoveling snow, etc.) then the Nano is by far your choice over an iPod with hard drive storage (such as the iPod Video). As of right now, I have 157 songs for 11.3 hours of play and only using 635.6 MBs of space, so I am hard pressed to think that someone who wants to just listen to music would really be able to fill up one of these Nanos, especially if they have the 4GB version.
Ok, let's see what it looks like in action:
Here we see the front and the back of Nano. As you can see it is very shiny, and has a chrome back. Of course, the down side is that it is easily dirtied and unfortunately fairly easy to scratch. After about one month playing with it, and keeping it mostly in it's case except when placed on my desk to listen to while working, it has a small scratch in the chrome back.
